November NaNoWriMo Challenge

A photo I took on Monday, 26 October 2009 at the Place de la Concorde in Paris

Okay, so I got an idea.

I have been trying to think of a way to post more regularly to this blog, to try to force myself into writing for it more often, and post things of interest for readers.

I also have been trying to think of a way to participate this year in NaNoWriMo.

Here is my profile for NaNoWriMo, by the way. Karin’s NaNoWriMo Page

I divide my time between trying to blog about my life as it operates in Paris with the hopes of providing information for people about living gluten-free in Paris, and also as a way for me to have motivation to exit my apartment doors and actually live a life here in Paris. If I set a goal to go out, take photos and then write about my experiences for this blog, I have something to do, something that gives me purpose in not simply sitting in front of the computer day-to-day.

This blog was born because of my desire to write about what it is like for me to live in Paris, and if people gain something from the information I glean, fantastic.

I also, though, have been blogging for over five years. I started and aborted on Blogger, first. I think I had a total of three blogs which never really amounted to much on Blogger at one point . I next tried out MySpace in the summer of 2005. I got to somewhat of a blogging start on MySpace, but was frustrated with the formatting and posting there. It was not until signing on to the now-defunct Yahoo! 360° in November 2005 that blogging and I really took off together. There, I gained a circle of writing and reading friends to whom I have become very, very close. We all eventually migrated to Multiply, a wonderful social networking site which I highly recommend. I do my personal “diary-style” writing there, and it is closed to the public. In the four years since I have been blogging on 360° then on Multiply, the connections I have there have become true and close friends, and I know I can trust them with things close to my heart.

With this blog, I have wanted to find a way to address my life in a form fit for public consumption, a form where people could read it and not know TOO much about me, but just enough to feel that I am personable, I am real, and I really have been trying to learn to live in and love Paris (it has not been a natural love in the making for me, something I would very much like to address in this blog more).

The thing is, I also want to be cautious about what I write here. Not everything about me needs to be known on this blog, not everything should be exposed.

I just finished reading the book Petite Anglaise which contains good lessons on how it can be prudent to not put too much “out there” in a public format. For more on petite’s (Catherine Sanderson’s) story, visit her site petite anglaise, read the book or check out the links here:

Wikipedia: Catherine Sanderson (she has her own Wikipedia article!! Wow! I am impressed…)

A Blogger site she kept during 2006 while the blog was in transition after the writing of her book: Anglaise at Blogspot

and

January 2009 Top Blogger at Expat-Blog.com

I adored reading the book, I related to so very much in it, and yeah, Catherine Sanders even lives in the same ‘hood that I do (the 19th), so reading the book and her past blogs (she has stopped blogging as of September of this year) feels like reading about my own life here in Paris. We even have had similarly-complicated situations when it comes to men and children and relationships. I highly recommend the book as a memoir of what it is like to be a young woman in Paris with a complicated life and one who blogs about it. The book is often like my own life in a nutshell, I can tell you.

I know, I must feel like I am sending readers on a rabbit chase with all these disconnected ideas. Let me connect the dots now.

I am most comfortable writing on my personal diary-blog on Multiply, but I want to find a way to be comfortable here, too and take true ownership of this blog. I want to expand this site into something. I don’t know exactly what, but I want it to amount to something, I want to nurture its existence. In addition, for a second year, I want to try NaNoWriMo. I had a go at it last year and got about a third of the way finished through a craptastic novella. I’m borrowing “craptastic” from two of my best online friends, Fictionista and Daisy, just so you know that is not a ParisKarin original term and in case they ever read this, I want them to know I am giving credit where credit is due. Orrr, was it Mame that came up with that one? Anyway, NaNo, as it shall heretofore be refered by me, entails writing 50,000 words through the month of November.

This is not a novel. Buuuut, it could be. It could be a memoir. It could morph into god/dess knows what. I just know that I need to write, and I need to write more on this blog. With Saturn’s migration into Libra territory as of the 29th, maybe the stars are lining up for this to be something more than it is.

I am, at any rate, on this November 1st, taking on the challenge to try to write 1,667 words per day. If most of it is shit, so be it. But I am feeling that this is the time and the place to go for this, to go ahead and kill a couple of birds with one well-placed stone. Heh. Do not expect to have my writing cliché free. Not gonna happen, lol.

It’s feeling a bit like the whole Julie & Julia thing where Julie Powell attempted to cook the 524 recipes of Julia Child’s in a year. Only I am cooking with words and serving up stuff about Paris here in this blog. I want to challenge myself with this.

(Word Count: 1051, give or take. Word Count Tool 616 more words needed for today.)